The Mockingjay's Daughter
by awkward-nerdy-person
Summary: Katniss and Peeta's daughter finally learns what her parents never told her. Takes place after the Mockingjay epilogue.


A slightly muffled scream shakes me awake.

I know who it is.

I slide out of bed noiselessly and creep down the hall to my parents' bedroom, hesitating at the door, almost afraid.

My father is turned on his right side, facing away from me, and blocking my mother on the other side of the bed from my view. I can hear him softly telling her to wake up, that it was okay.

"Dad?" I say as loud as I dare. He turns his face over his shoulder to look at me.

"It's okay, Freesia. Go on and go back to bed," he tells me, and then he turns away again, murmuring comforting words to my mother next to him and, from what I can tell, gently rubbing her shoulder.

I pad back to my room in silence and absent-mindedly leave my door slightly ajar. I curl underneath the covers and try to force sleep into my mind, but I can't. Not with my mother's scream bouncing around in my head.

I know why. I've known for a while now.

They had sat me down at the kitchen table and spoke to me about Old Panem, about the Hunger Games, about the War. They had wanted to wait until I was old enough to grasp it.

But my mind has not yet wrapped itself around this. They hadn't told me everything at the time, of course, seeing that I was only twelve. But it's been four years. What dark secrets are they keeping from me and Dill? Of course, they still hadn't told him. He was still only ten years old. He couldn't know. Not yet. But me? I was sixteen. We had briefly studied about the Hunger Games in school, about the revolution that followed. Sometimes I would see my parents' names in my textbook, alongside stories I had yet to hear. I never knew what to make of it.

I was lying on my bed, trying to make sense about this, when I heard my father's gentle knock on my door. He poked his head in, seeing if I was awake.

"Hey, Dad," I say, bringing my knees up to my chest and sitting up.

He comes in and sits on the edge of my bed, followed by my mother. In the soft moonlight slipping in through the curtains of my bedroom, they look much older than they are, although I know that they have aged remarkably well.

"Are you ready?" my mother asks quietly. There is a heaviness surrounding them that I realize they are now extending to me.

"Yes," I say.

They start with their first Reaping. Of course, they had mentioned it to me before, but now there was a depth to it, a heaviness. They had never told me that while my father had five slips, my mother had twenty. They never told me about what they had felt while taking their places on the stage in front of the Justice Building. They never told me about who really gave my mother her mockingjay pin that always perched proudly on her hunting jacket.

They continue on, as I listen to the new dimensions added onto my knowledge on their first games, the Quell arena, and the beginnings of the rebellion. I stay silent as they speak, perfectly in tune with one another. I know that the time for questions comes after.

They hesitate a moment, and I can see that speaking of these things is putting my father on the brink of a flashback. But they do give me a few last bits of information about the War. Stories in my textbook for school pale in comparison to their first-hand accounts.

They do not tell me everything, of course. They do leave out certain pieces that they feel would still be too heavy for me. But I understand. My father's rapidly dilating pupils and my mother's tight grip on his hand tell me that I do not need to know everything right now.

My father tells me that I do not need to know about his experiences in the Capitol. That, he says, is too much for anyone to bear.

I accept this without a second thought.

All of the questions I would have asked are answered before I think to let them leave my lips. I do not ask who the dark-haired man in the locket I found on my mother's dresser is. I do not ask what my mother thinks happened to her beloved stylist. I do not ask my father the real name of the redheaded Avox he named Delly. I wish no more pain on either of my parents. I know from the screams my mother makes in the dead of the night, I know from the blue color that invades my father's knuckles as he struggles to fight off a flashback, and I know from the details of their stories they omit.

I promise them that I will be brave as long as they continue to be.

My mother, her beautiful face worn by twenty-odd, possibly thirty years since her experiences, crawls over the bed to me and wraps me in a hug, followed by my father, who smooths a gentle hand down my long, dark hair. I know that he has always been fond of the way my mother wears hers in a single braid down her back, and so I had taken to wearing my hair this way as well, just to give him another reason to smile.

They plant kisses on my head and leave the room silently, my father's arm around my mother's fragile frame, my mother's head on his steady shoulder. It's almost as if they are relieved that they have finally told me.

I do ask one question before the door shuts completely.

"Was it all worth it?"

I can just barely see my father pause where he stands. He looks at me through the crack in the doorway.

"Definitely."


End file.
